I. Field
The present application relates generally to the operation of a distribution network, and more particularly, to methods and apparatus for providing service notifications in a network environment.
II. Description of the Related Art
Data networks, such as wireless communication networks, have to trade off between services customized for a single terminal and services provided to a large number of terminals. For example, the distribution of multimedia content to a large number of resource limited portable devices (subscribers) is a complicated problem. Therefore, it is very important for network administrators, content retailers, and service providers to have a way to distribute content and/or other network services in a fast and efficient manner and in such a way as to increase bandwidth utilization and power efficiency.
In current content delivery/media distribution systems, real time and non real time services are packed and delivered to devices on a network. For example, a communication network may utilize Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) to broadcast content and services from a network server to one or more mobile devices. During operation, distribution system entities would like to notify targeted devices of selected events, such as marketing promotions, price changes, programming changes, or other events of interest to device users. These same entities may also wish to notify devices of application upgrades or other information that may be available for retrieval. Unfortunately, conventional systems may not provide a fast and efficient mechanism to notify targeted devices of events of interest, or to notify devices of application upgrade or other information that may be available for retrieval.
Therefore, it is desirable to have a system that operates to provide notifications of events of interest to targeted devices on a broadcast network. The system should also operate to notify targeted devices of available upgrades or other information and facilitate automatic retrieval of such upgrades or information.